A Happy Death

Unpublished during the author's lifetime, A Happy Death is Albert Camus's first novel and a notable precursor to The Stranger.

Albert Camus wrote A Happy Death in 1935, when he was just twenty-three years old. Despite leaving the text almost finished, he never attempted to publish it, and everything indicates that he put it aside to focus on his next project, The Stranger. Thus, it was not until 1971, eleven years after his death, that the unpublished work came to light. But the wait was not in vain. In its lyrical evocations of the sea and the Mediterranean landscape, A Happy Death provides insights into Camus's experience in Algeria, while its plot and characters prefigure the worldview that the author later exposed in his "cycle of the absurd." Read today, this remarkable early novel is not only essential for discovering the first samples of Camus's immense talent, but it is also a fascinating book in its own right.

Critics have said:
«A Happy Death reveals its richness on numerous levels. We find in it multiple flashes of style, and the novel is proof of the diversity that Camus's palette had already acquired, a clear advance in relation to previous texts.»
Agnès Spiquel

«A Happy Death can well be read as the meditation of a young man with no money, who expects to die soon and wonders why he shouldn't do everything necessary to enjoy his last days to the fullest.»
English Showalter